So Miss E really wants to do yoga and it's hard to schedule it in the summer because my instructor has kids too. Yesterday the scheduling got mucked up so we're about to go now to a session at the studio. I think I'll mostly be doing some much-needed stretching.

The workshops for Reno are all sorted and sent out. 18 sections, 54 subs. I have 10 people on a wait list and not much hope of creating another section. Rich and I are determined to make them bigger in Chicago. Basically that means wheedling every pro we know into helping us. And we'll look at how this goes with the four rooms and one room being a green room with coffee and tea service. You learn as you go. Traci tcastleb has once again been the savior of the workshops with her ability to triage the submissions quickly. It takes me longer to finalize the decisions than it takes her to throw them onto a Bell curve and make suggestions. Then it takes a while to download all the stories properly and then sort out the emails going back out.

I also got my act together and did some tax stuff looming over me.

And Weatherdude asks if I would like to go test drive some cars today. Three, in fact. A diesel VW wagon, a V50 Volvo wagon and an XC60 Volvo. Wagons are once again unpopular. We always seem to want the unpopular car.

And then, there's ditchriding. I have this thing about measurement systems. To me they're all man-made and arbitrary, whether or not they're logically built. Who knows what our system of measurement will be out in the future? So how do I translate what are known as "imperial" units to something futuristic? klingonguy has suggested that a unit of Smoots might work. (google it, if you don't know what it is.) Which kind of makes sense with my family background. But translating the measurements into Smoots won't be easy either.

Frankly? That's just me procrastinating the writing. It's a solvable problem with a concrete answer. So my brain wants to do it. I used to run into this with tax research. Looking up citations? Piece of cake, give 'em to me. They have a concrete answer. Looking up and researching a topic or a question? Well, open-ended and difficult to decide when you have enough information to write up your research. Same thing here. Writing the rest of the story is more open-ended. So my brain would rather calculate the conversions.

Harumph. Must not do conversions until I have a full draft that's readable.

Are you trying to confuse the senile!cat that meows under the bed by moving it? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Ditchriding is a title. Or Ditchrider is. I was supposed to have a readable draft by July 3rd. I am behindhand. Delia Sherman fixed me with a masterly gaze at Readercon and now I must, must, must do as she commanded and get my drafts done enough to send out. How could I not?

Wasn't Smoot the guy used to measure a bridge? Anyway, on behalf of spec fic writers everywhere, I want to thank you for your work in organizing workshops and other programming. You put a lot of work into the behind-the-scenes part of cons, and not everyone realizes how much work is involved.

Yes that Smoot. And he was apparently later the President of the weights and measures standards organization, which is fitting.

I have a team, so hopefully I won't get burned out on the workshops...though there's always a point where I wonder why I'm doing it. Adrienne used to do it by herself and that's just a huge burden to take on. Thanks for the thanks!

I'm tickled to be your core audience :-). Although ironically your audience is in the process of changing their interests to better appreciate your posts rather than vice-versa. I've been plowing through novels lately and decided to branch out into non-fiction and am reading "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel".

I started keeping a journal yesterday, per a tip in one of the early chapters. I think I read in there that minding two kids under two falls under the category "hindrances" for novelists, but life is long; I'm not so ambitious I need to get anything done in the next dozen years. The journal will be thick by the time I'm ready to rock n roll.